Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon.

I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.

Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present—intolerable—and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color.

Rainwater held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe.

You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face.

If I did I didn't know it. What's it like, velvet?'

'Well, Lu, velvet is like the world was just born. Clean and new and so smooth.